Eric Allison: Prisoner to Prison Correspondent

“In prison I used to get put in segregation for saying my piece and yet here I am giving you my comments and my thoughts and getting paid.”

Eric Allison, 71, spent around 16 years behind bars all for theft related offences. In 2003, he applied for the job as the Guardian’s Prison Correspondent with a criminal record for a CV. In the past decade, he transformed his life from a prisoner to a prison reporter.

As a young boy, aged 11, Allison got his first conviction for housebreaking on his criminal record, and three years on, at 14 he was given his first custodial sentence.

I was always pretty anti-authority; if somebody told me to do something I would go out of my way to not do it.  I was very rebellious. I wasn’t very happy as a child. I had quite a bad stammer and a squint in my eye, and I used to get a lot of name calling and I would fight them. I was always fighting as a kid, and I stopped going to secondary school. I was away from school far more then I attended.

I ran away from home and broke into a day nursery to sleep. I was caught and put on probation and when I was 14 years old I breached that probation because I stole a chewing gum machine. I was sentenced at the juvenile court in Manchester and two police officers took me down to Foston Hall detention centre, on the border of Staffordshire and Derbyshire. It was December and it was dark when we got there, it was a big sort of gloomy Victorian building with barbed wire fence round. We went into the reception area and this guy told me to stand on the white line and give my name, I said “Eric Allison” and I was going to say “Sir” but because of the stammer the Sir wouldn’t come out. The guy just walked across me, clenched his fist and punched me really hard across the face. I was so frightened because I thought if he could assault me in front of two police officers, what were they going to do when the police were gone? I was terrified so much that I wet the bed in the cell that night. They put me in a dormitory with other kids who wet the bed and they used to wake us up every hour to go to the toilet whether we wanted to or not. We were knackered because it was run on the military lines. You’d never stop.

“You wouldn’t let the system beat you”

The detention centre was meant to be a short sharp shock. The idea was to frighten the life out of us so we wouldn’t come back, and of course it didn’t work. This comes back to the defiance, you start sticking together and it becomes us against them or them against us and you become determined not to let them win. You wouldn’t let the system beat you.

I’ve been locked up with murderers, terrorists, rapists and psychopaths. You name it, even gangsters. I’ve seen a lot of examples of prisoners behaving badly towards one another, but if I was to list the worst twenty acts in humanity that I have ever seen in prison, not one of them in the top twenty would be carried out by a prisoner. I’ve seen six or seven prison officers beat people to pulp, with sticks, and I have had it, I’ve been beaten and batten myself. There had been times when I thought: “These bastards are going to kill me.” 

 “I got a buzz out of it”

Not many days would go by when I didn’t commit a crime. I loved the excitement; I got a buzz out of it. I miss that excitement even now. It was never about the money, it was actually the taking part. The buzz… I got a buzz from it without a shadow of a doubt.

Around 1968, I was sent to Strangeway’s prison for 4 and a half years, this was the longest time I spent away in one go because I lost all the remission I may have got for good behaviour. In the 60s, it was a stinking place, all the “slopping out” because there was no in-cell sanitation then, everything was lousy, visiting was lousy, the staff were lousy too; there were a lot of bullies, a lot of thugs. I spent a long time in segregation.

On April fool’s day 1990, a time where Allison was at liberty, a riot broke out in Strangeway’s Prison. The protest lasted 25 days, the biggest in British Penal History.

Prisoners protesting on the roof at Strangeways Prison

I was out of prison but I remember it, I had been somewhere Sunday morning and I came back home and my stepson said: “It’s gone off at Strangeways, it’s on the news” and I drove down straight away and I saw them all on the roof and it was quite…quite emotional because I had a very bad relationship with the place. I hated the place and to see these kids on the roof I actually felt quite jealous in a way. I wanted to be there on the roof.

I took a loud-hailer down with me most days, and I was shouting up to them on the roof and I was talking to people, all of the press that were there, I was telling them what was wrong with the place. I just felt quite emotional; they did something that we had never managed to do. I was elated for them, but also concerned because I knew the ring leaders would pay a very heavy price and so they did.

In 1996 Allison was sent back to Strangeway’s prison, he was sentenced to seven years for scamming £1 million from Barclay’s bank. This was the last time he was in jail, serving just over 3 years.

When I went back in the 90s everything had changed, but the biggest change was the attitude of the staff; all the thugs had gone. I had my own moral boundaries that I wouldn’t cross in crime. I thought in a way I’ve always been a good criminal, but when the system is cruel and unjust then the criminal becomes the victim.

Freedom is a funny thing, I came out just at the millennium but even now I get feelings, and I visit prisons quite a lot so it still takes me back. Prison changes you…It’s a bit like, you know, you….you sort of get solitude…

The first time I was in a cell on my own it was very lonely, and I found the loneliness quite difficult. You make a virtue out of a necessity and I began to embrace loneliness then. I find it difficult to live with people. I’m much better off living alone. I think prison has a lot to do with that.

My eldest girl was at University while I was away and she had told me that somebody would say “What does your dad do? – “Oh my dad’s a thief” - but having got the job she says “my dad writes for the Guardian”. That was a good moment in my life.

I always enjoyed writing; it was always the one thing I was good at in school. I like words and I got my education in prison. The Guardian advertised for the position and I applied for the job. They wanted a 500 word essay and a CV, but my CV was all prison and crime. I never thought for one second that I would get the job; I didn’t even think that I wanted it. I just thought I would tell them what was wrong with the prison system.

I couldn’t type; I didn’t know one end of the computer from the other. I had to start absolutely from scratch. When they said the jobs yours I had to go away and think about it. I just knew it would be a massive change. I can’t remember when I didn’t steal… I was five or six when I started nicking stuff, I was quite frightened by the idea of being a straight go-er and even now I feel like a bit of an imposter sometimes.

This will be my eleventh year at the Guardian now, sometimes it seems as if I have been here all my life and other times it feels like I’ve just arrived. Occasionally I do stuff for ‘Comment is Free’ and they’re always very apologetic it’s only 90 quid, but I say, “Are you kidding?” In prison I used to get put in segregation for saying my piece and yet here I am giving you my comments and my thoughts and getting paid…it’s odd.

If it hadn’t have been for the job, I would still be at it without a shadow of a doubt, because that would be the only thing I knew. 

A version of this article has been published on The Justice Gap, a trade magazine on the law and justice. Click here.